by Zakes Mda
Television is the family’s lifeblood. The family interacts with the rest of America through television. They partake of the American dream through the lives of the celebrities whose wealth, love affairs, divorces and pregnancies are followed faithfully. When they comment on them it is as though they know them personally. In this way they are no different from third world people who have never set foot on American soil yet live on a daily diet of these programs and American food aid. The Quigleys depend for their survival on food rations from the Kilvert Community Center. They “shop” for all their clothes at the Center. Since my arrival I contribute toward the groceries. And I pay for room and board. Which all goes a long way toward giving our dinner table some variety.
But of course I am digressing now. We are watching the blank screen. Silent. Smiling smileless smiles. Moping. Smarting. Even Orpah’s sitar is silent. Perhaps she is creating replacements for the designs that have been destroyed today.
The absence of television doesn’t really bother me because even when it is blaring above any meaningful conversation it rarely ever gives me a picture of what is happening in the world. America is kept ignorant of the world; except of course of the places where the homeland’s troops are actively involved. Even in that case they only know what it is in the national interest to know, for their free and independent media are patriotic and will therefore not give all sides of the story. This last observation may appear commonplace to most American readers. They may even think it lowers the tone of my story. But it will certainly amaze those who are following my story from South Africa; they think that the media here are the freest ever and that journalists can report on anything without fear of being labeled unpatriotic.
Anyway, Americans can afford to be ignorant about the world because they don’t need the world. They are, after all, as their Commander-in-Chief once put it, God’s gift to humanity. Even Obed, who otherwise does not share Ruth’s faith in the Commander-in-Chief, believes that he is God’s gift to humanity. He has said as much whenever we disagree on something. He always resorts to invoking his Americanness as a way of convincing me of the rightness of his position.
After an uneasy silence on my part I break it. I apologize to Ruth for my indiscretions. I admit that her family matters are none of my business. Encouraged by the slight smile on her face I tell her how much I have admired her and her love of tradition. Her tradition of making food, for instance. Her face brightens and her smile broadens. I knew I would get her there. Food. I have become a scoundrel like Obed.
“Lots of us have not lost that tradition,” she tells me.
Then she goes on about the great tradition of making food that must last for the whole year. Preserving corn, beans and vegetables. Bottling the food that lends itself to bottling. Making her own dressing and ketchup. Hanging the meat and smoking it in the smoke room. Scraping mold from it before cooking it.
I have seen some of this food for it is stored in the cellar where I sleep. Except for the smoked meat, which was moved to the attic some time back, after I could not stomach the smell at night. This tradition, I tell her, is nourishing. We are so much at peace with each other that I do not voice my thoughts that the destruction of Orpah’s work is not a nourishing tradition.
“One day Orpah will know I am doing all this for her,” says Ruth. “To save her from herself. Why don’t she understand that? Why don’t she wanna learn nothing?”
She breaks into a sob. For the first time I see an anxious look on Mahlon. He looks at me as if he is blaming me for making his Ruth cry.
“Everything’s gonna be all right, Mama,” says Obed softly, as he helps her up from the car seat. I hand her the cane from the floor. She is sniveling as she waddles off to her room.
Ruth regains some of her confidence in me, and once more we are friends. But it is no longer like before. I can feel that something now stands between us. Yes, we still do sit on the swing when Mahlon is not hogging it. This afternoon the winter winds are blowing such a chill it would be death to sit outdoors. So we sit in front of the stove enjoying the sleep-tempting sounds of the flames and taking in the waxy smell of the burning wood. She has that beautiful faraway look as she tells me about the first Quigley (Lord have mercy on him); a great Irishman who was a conductor of the Underground Railroad; a friend and ally of the Tablers after whom Tabler Town was named before it became Kilvert. He had pretty black hair. “I suppose that’s where I get my pretty black hair,” she adds. I look at the mop on her head. It is no longer the pretty black hair she is talking about. It is predominantly silver and brown with only a few streaks of black. I remember Obed telling me about the first Quigley to settle in Tabler Town. That one was blond. I also remember observing within myself that hair was the first feature they mentioned whenever they talked of their forebears.
The beautiful faraway look continues as she relates how her great-great-grandfather crossed a frozen Mississippi River, escaping from slavery. I think it is more romantic to make him come from the deepest South and cross a greater river than the mere Ohio. And, of course, she shares with me memories of her childhood: how as a little girl she and her friends went to bathe at the Federal Creek.
“The last thing you did at night was to take a dive in that creek,” she says. “Right in the middle of a cold winter!”
Those were beautiful carefree days.
“We was poor,” she says. “But we was never hungry. My mama would make something out of nothing.”
I think she has taken after her mother. She is the sole breadwinner and her quilts don’t sell that well. And yet she is able to conjure up food from her garden and from the food pantry at the Center, and prepare real tasty and wholesome meals. And have something left to preserve for leaner times.
Life was not complicated in those days, she continues.
“We raised our own meat…our cellar was full. Our tradition was to go to town every Saturday. Even if you had nothing to buy you went to town for the gossip.”
This was where they met racism. Because of their dark skin they were refused seats at restaurants and no barbershop would touch their hair. They were not even allowed to attend the same schools as children of the neighboring villages. The neighboring village of Chesterhill even outlawed people of color altogether. Some of the kids were yellow enough to pass for white and therefore were sent to a white school in Stewart. But soon the people there discovered that they were from Kilvert and all hell broke loose. Others, however, melted into white society and just became white.
“Ain’t it surprising now we see people who’re obviously Caucasian claiming minority status to benefit from them programs?” she asks. “After kicking us out of their schools too?”
Kilvert had its own one-roomed school, which the darker kids who couldn’t go to Stewart because of their complexion attended. Both she and Mahlon attended that school.
“So, that’s where you met?” I ask.
No, they knew each other from the time they were toddlers. He is only a year or two older. They were like brother and sister. In fact, they are cousins. They are both descendants of the first Quigley and of Abednego and of Harry Corbett. And of the generations of African Americans, Native Americans and Caucasian Americans who intermarried after that. They are all part of the inbreeding that has happened over the decades in Kilvert.
From what Ruth tells me, it becomes clear that Kilvert’s poverty is no accident. It is the legacy of the past isolation. Kilvert was denied services such as electricity until the 1950s and natural gas lines were only made available as late as 1967. Ruth tells me this with pride because it shows how tough her people are, and how they did not need any of these modern amenities that have made everyone lazy. That is why she still keeps her coal stove despite the fact that she has a gas one.
“Oh, man, those were them days,” says Ruth with some nostalgia that I fail to understand since from what she is saying “them days” didn’t seem like pleasant days at all. “I remember them cross burnings of the 1950s. I
was a kid but I remember them like it was yesterday. People from Stewart hated us. Stewart was all white. Even today there’s only one black family in Stewart—Barbara Parsons’ boy.”
You do remember Barbara Parsons: the food bank manager and fund-raiser at the Kilvert Community Center.
“Talking of Barbara Parsons, I was at the quilt auction at the Center the other day,” I say. “I saw none of your quilts.”
The quilt auction is an occasional event organized by Irene Flowers and Barbara Parsons. I was fortunate to catch one a few weeks after my arrival. Most of the quilts on sale were made by the two women. Obed was the auctioneer. That’s where I saw that he could be useful sometimes. He was a very charming auctioneer too, making jokes about the bidders and the inspiring things they could do on those lovely quilts. He had the ladies eating out of his hand. I had expected to see some of Ruth’s quilts.
“I don’t take my quilts there no more,” she says. She does not want to talk about it. Instead she leans over and in her conspiratorial tone asks me to follow her to her bedroom, where she will show me something very important.
Right at the bottom of her quilt box she takes out an old almost threadbare quilt folded neatly in a pillow case. She spreads it on her bed. I do not tell her that I know something about this quilt. I have actually seen it a few times when she airs it. There has been a lot of derisive gossip from Obed about it. It is an Irish Wheel. Ruth points out a faint image on the quilt; rust in color. She says that is the image of the first Quigley—Lord have mercy on him. He died on this quilt. Although she does not make the comparison, it is obvious that to her this quilt is like the shroud of Turin. She does not let it be washed and it is always kept under lock and key in her oak chest. I chuckle to myself at the memory of Obed telling me that he and Orpah often laugh at the quilt behind Ruth’s back. They say that the outline on the quilt is that of dry urine rather than an image of a person. But, you know, you can see a person in that image if you look hard enough.
Later I hear from the women at the Center that Ruth does not send her quilts to the auction because she does not talk to them anymore. When she banned Orpah from ever touching her sewing machine Orpah went to learn quilting at the Center. Ruth heard about it and quarreled with the women there. But they continued to teach Orpah even after her mother threatened never to send her quilts to the auction again. It was Orpah who gave up the lessons on her own because she felt her tutors were just as traditionalist as her mother in their approach to quilts, although they were not rabidly opposed to anyone who wanted to dabble in the newfangled art quilts.
If I thought I had regained Ruth’s trust I was wrong. She gradually gets disillusioned with me because of the negative influence she claims I have on her children: approving Orpah’s wayward behavior; encouraging Obed to follow his heart into Native American shamanistic practices; going to the local church, which I didn’t know she was boycotting; arranging to take quiltmaking lessons with the women at the Center; and inventing silly names such as “Ayatollah Ruth” and “A Taliban in the House,” which both Obed and Orpah are calling her behind her back. I am ashamed of this last one. I never thought it would reach her ears. But it did, thanks to Obed’s loose tongue.
What crowned her disillusionment with me more than anything else was her discovery of Obed’s misadventure at the sorority house and his arrest. You see, Beth called to remind me of the painting job that Obed was supposed to do as soon as the winter was over, and to find out about the kind of paint that was needed and the cost since she was working on the budget. I was at the Center at the time, so Ruth received the call and started to probe, excited that Obed had finally got around to doing something useful with his life. She was shocked to discover that in fact he would not be painting the house for a fee, but to pay for his crime.
“They done lock my baby up and you don’t tell me nothing about it,” Ruth said as soon as I set foot in the kitchen where she was heaving over a steaming pot.
I couldn’t lie. I had to confess the whole story. I assured her that there was nothing to worry about anymore because everything was sorted out through mediation. Her baby would therefore not go to jail. But that was not good enough. She felt that I had betrayed her when she thought we had developed a bond between us. It showed that one could never trust people from Africa. They could easily sell one just as they sold the African Americans into slavery.
When Obed returned from wherever he had been she welcomed him with: “Where were you at, boy? Fondling girls’ breasts?”
He glared at me accusingly. I shook my head to say it was not me.
“You don’t toy with ghosts, boy. Especially them ghosts that died violently like Nicodemus died,” said Ruth as she walked out of the kitchen. “God knows what’s gonna happen to you, boy,” her voice continued from her workstation. “You don’t amount to no good with them ghosts and Indian witchcraft.”
I told him about Beth’s call. His face brightened when I mentioned her name. He lamented that there were three whole months before he could paint the three-story building. I never thought I would see the day when Obed was looking forward to some labor. The very Obed who would not even split firewood for his mama!
“If it’s any consolation,” I said, “I admire you for trying to explore the culture of your Native American people. But you need to learn about these things…consult people who know…serve periods of apprenticeship under genuine shamans and hand tremblers and scryers…so that you don’t turn a great culture into some buffoonery.”
“You didn’t say none of that to Mama. You didn’t tell her it’s a good thing.”
“From what I have come to know of your mama, no one tells her anything.”
“She likes you, man. Thinks you’re the best thing since sliced bread.”
“Not after my foolish outburst about Orpah’s drawings and now the secret that I kept from her about your arrest.”
“Still, she likes you. If I didn’t know her no better I’d say there’s a thing between you two.”
I burst out laughing. What a preposterous thought! I remembered touching Ruth on the shoulder one day when she had said something funny and I was laughing. She froze and gave me a stern look. I withdrew my hand quickly. That is the problem: I come from a place where people are physically demonstrative.
I had not been aware that Ruth could hear every word of this conversation from her workstation until she brought it to my attention by hollering that it was exactly as she had suspected: I was leading her children on a path to hell.
That was the second crime I had committed against her in one day.
Both the quiltmaking and the church-going crimes were committed through my gross ignorance of the politics of the village.
Apparently Ruth heard that I had expressed an interest in quiltmaking and the women at the Center had offered to teach me. They were excited about the whole idea. Although quiltmaking was traditionally a woman’s occupation, at the Center they had begun to introduce two or three men to the art, and one was proving to be very good at it. So I was quite welcome to learn as well, they told me. It did not bother me that Obed was against the idea, and felt that I—a role model and an ascetic votary of my own sacred order of professional mourners—had betrayed him by reducing myself to a common quiltmaker. Ruth, on the other hand, felt betrayed because I was now in cahoots with her enemies—people who interfered in her family affairs by trying to teach Orpah how to quilt when she, as Orpah’s mother, had decided the “girl” must never touch a sewing machine until she learned to respect the heritage of her people. But through it all I could also see some jealousy, that now she would no longer have the monopoly of her own personal African. I was now going to be Barbara Parsons’ African and Irene Flowers’ African as well.
The church thing was really a result of my curiosity to see what was going on in that little chocolate building by the road. I passed it every time I went to mourn quietly at the graveyard where Kilvert families—the Tablers, the Flowerses, the Mayle
ses, the Quigleys, the Jenkinses, the Kennedys—sleep in peace under piles of fresh flowers. So, one Sunday I decided to walk into the church.
I was surprised to find only five people, including the pastor, in the church. They must be the owners of the four SUVs parked outside. The pastor was conducting a thirty-minute Sunday school for his flock of four before the service could start. I kept on hoping for his sake that more people would come and fill the five pews on one side and seven pews across the aisle. Even inside, the church was like a dollhouse, with brown wooden panels on the walls. Brown is the color. There was a wall tapestry of Jesus holding a lamb, in shades of brown. Framed pictures of Jesus as a shepherd surrounded by sheep, in shades of brown.
“When will the resurrection come?” the pastor asked his congregation.
“When the trumpet sounds,” they responded in unison. They were reading from the pamphlets they were holding.
“And remember, no one knows when that will be,” said the pastor.
The service began. Sister Naomi played the piano and the congregation sang “He Hideth My Soul.” Another woman stood behind the lectern at the pulpit rolling her eyes to the heavens while she sang above everyone else’s voice. Above the piano too. They all sang in unison and I had never heard such atrocious singing in my life. The pastor punctuated the song with Amens.
And then he preached. “God is the spirit,” he said, “and you cannot worship him except in spirit and in truth.” He preached to the three men and two women as if he was preaching to a multitude of thirty thousand. My only disappointment was that he was not hoofing. I know of hoofing from black television preachers. I find it very entertaining when they dance about and speak and sing at the same time with the organ taking part in that conversation. I remembered the story Obed told me about his own hoofing experience. Ruth prophesied that he would come to no good when she caught him and two of his friends, one of them Nathan, engaged in a hoofing competition—“back in the day,” as he put it. He had invented a contest where boys gathered and competed on who was the best hoofer. “You don’t take God’s name in vain, boy,” Ruth had said, “otherwise you won’t come to no good.” Fortunately she never got to know that it was worse than she thought. The boys were seasoning their preaching with words that were far from Godly—words about women and sex. All this was done to the music of Nathan’s harmonica. The more comedic and vulgar the hoofing, the better the chances for the performer to win the contest.